1. Attend to my neighbors. As in, the people whose physical presence and proximity make them obvious choices for care, cultivation, and friendship. I have this tendency to pine over not being able to do more for people who live far away while letting immediate relationships languish. I'm thinking of adopting, as a rule of thumb, the practice of doing something practical and good for someone near me whenever I catch myself whimpering about someone far away.

2. Don't gain weight. I worked awfully hard to lose all that weight last year. Now I've got to keep it off.

3. Read the Bible through in a year. I resolved this last year, but it was the resolution that sort of faded from view after a while. Here we go again.

4. Put some poetry in my head. There's really no excuse for not being able to declaim a bit of Shakespeare or Wordsworth when an opportunity presents itself.

In other news, I've been undergoing some shifts of focus lately. Last year was a Jane Austen year. This year is going to be a Dostoevsky year.